Heaven's Coast - Mark Doty [142]
“The same exquisite sensibility that informs Doty’s poetry is at work in this magnificent memoir…. Heaven’s Coast is more than the memory of the dying of a body; it is a record of the birthing of a spirit.”
—Seattle Times
“In Heaven’s Coast [Doty] has sung a lyric to his love, a rhapsody. Heaven’s Coast is both a journal of mourning and a memoir of heartache, an attempt through language to manage unmanageable grief…. Profoundly sad, yet somehow hopeful.”
—Newsday
“[A] luminous study of love and loss.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Day-to-day details are often transformed by beautiful or cutting verse.”
—Out
“A wonderfully written book…a work of humility.”
—Hartford Courant
“With a poet’s precise economy of language, Doty meditates on his relationship with his dying lover…. He has a gift for coaxing insight from the seemingly commonplace.”
—The Nation
“Doty’s is that rare book about death and dying that reading it makes us glad to be alive in this world and able to love someone, even while knowing that someday we will lose them.”
—Asheville Citizen-Times
“A heart, a soul sing of love and loss in this beautifully and powerfully wrought remembrance given us by one of our finest poets. Mark Doty’s lyrical, deeply affecting voice, so poised and compelling in his poems, sustains itself wonderfully over the long, brave haul of this venture of his into prose. Always he is warm, honest, generous—a writer with so very much to tell us, teach us, give to us.”
—Robert Coles
“Mark Doty understands the rhythms of language, riding them like a gull on the wind. Heaven’s Coast is just that graceful, but also rich in sturdy earthbound wisdom. It broke my heart, then somehow made it stronger.”
—Armistead Maupin
“Heaven’s Coast is a radiant and profound work of art. Reading it was a transforming experience, so much so that I’m afraid I may need months or years to fully comprehend what it’s meant to me. For now, all I can say is that I’m astonished by Mark Doty’s command not only of language but of the shifting, nearly inchoate mortal conditions language seeks to illuminate. During the time I was reading Heaven’s Coast I found myself wanting to call everyone I knew and say, ‘Stop whatever you’re doing and read this book.’ I suspect it will prove to be an enduring accomplishment.”
—Michael Cunningham
ALSO BY MARK DOTY
Turtle, Swan (1987)
Bethlehem in Broad Daylight (1991)
My Alexandria (1993)
Atlantis (1995)
Heaven’s Coast (1996)
Sweet Machine (1998)
Firebird (1999)
Still Life with Oysters and Lemon (2001)
Source (2001)
School of the Arts (2005)
Copyright
HEAVEN’S COAST. Copyright © 1996 by Mark Doty. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © FEBRUARY 2008 ISBN: 9780061871634
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Contents
Preface
Prologue: Is There a Future?